(50 



of many of their native species, provided adequate substitutes were pre- 

 served, would therefore involve no necessary impairment of the welfare of 

 their industries or of their people. 



In the administration of the permanent plan of forestation there should 

 be interference with nature sufficient at least to secure the perpetuation 

 of the species which are economically the most useful and to secure the 

 elimination from the commercial forests of other species less useful and 

 more expensive to reproduce. Perhaps we have not always given adequate 

 consideration to this principle of selection of species in the effort to pro- 

 vide a permanent future supply of timber for the wood-using industries of 

 these states. 



.How Geographically, Should the Forests Be Distributed,? The third 

 great factor in the determination of the economic position of state forests is 

 their geographical distribution. If it may be assumed that the lumber 

 requirements of the nation will be adequately met by a volume of growing 

 forests, with properly distributed age classes, sufficient to yield during an 

 estimated average one hundred year period of rotation a total of four 

 trillion feet; and assuming that the forest lands on the average for both 

 softwood and hardwood will yield ten thousand feet of mature timber per 

 acre, not more than four hundred million acres under permanent foresta- 

 tion will be required. This is about one-fifth of the land area of the United 

 States and is approximately twice the area of the present public forests, 

 national, state and municipal. 



Less than one-fourth of the total land area of the United States is now 

 in improved farms. About one-fifth more is attached to farms but is un- 

 improved. Nearly one-fifth is at present arid waste land useful for neither 

 agriculture nor forestation, much of it capable of reclamation by irrigation. 

 There is available, therefore, land sufficient to support a great expansion 

 in agricultural activity and to provide fully for future forest supplies. 



The softwood forests will probably be located in the mountain regions 

 of the west, east, and south, the sand plains of the lake states and the low- 

 lands along many parts of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The hardwoods 

 will perhaps be confined largely to the southern Appalachians, rough 

 country along the Ohio river, the middle and lower Mississippi and their 

 tributaries, to some of the uplands of the lake states and to the farm 

 woodlots which are characteristic of the agricultural enterprises in the 

 central states and the middle west. 



Forest policies by states individually or by groups are formulated under 

 a substantial handicap because of their lack of control over the policies 

 and activities of other states. No single state can intelligently determine 

 how large its focests should be, what kinds of timber they should contain, 

 and on what lands they should be located without giving consideration to 

 the policies of neighboring states and of the nation at large. The products 

 of the forests are sold in interstate commerce which ignores all state 

 boundaries. A centralized control over the forestry activities of all the 

 states would make practicable a national forest policy that would secure 

 the most efficient possible adaptation of the quantity, quality and location 

 of the forests to the needs of the industries for which they must continue 

 to provide the raw material. If state lines do not determine the markets 



